One important goal of personal communication services is to allow users to communicate from anywhere to anywhere at any time. Such personal communication services generally involve multiple service providers including local and long distance telephone companies and cellular telephone companies. An example of a personal communication service is as follows:
A personal communication service provider (e.g., a cellular telephone company) enables traveling users to rent a wireless portable phone from a rental phone company (e.g., from an airline or car rental company). A sales representative travels from a home location e.g., New Jersey, to a visiting location, e.g., California. In order to get in touch with his/her boss and his/her home, the user rents a wireless portable phone immediately upon arrival in California. Using the rental phone, the user is provided with basic mobile phone service from the personal communication service provider. In addition, the user would like the following features:
1) The user wants calls directed to his/her office or home to be automatically forwarded to the rental portable phone, without informing anyone that he/she is traveling. PA1 2) To avoid unimportant incoming calls, (and corresponding incoming call charges), the user would like to restrict the number of people who can call the rented portable phone. PA1 3) It is important to the user that the rental phone features be activated instantly, so that calls can be made immediately upon the user's arrival at the visiting location. PA1 .cndot. check credit databases owned by credit card companies or phone companies to determine whether the user is able to pay for the service; PA1 .cndot. check the customer profile database in the user's HLR to determine whether the user is currently located in a place other than the visiting location currently stored in the HLR; PA1 .cndot. check the credit and network databases of long distance phone companies specified by the user to determine whether the user can use a particular long distance carrier in the visiting location; PA1 .cndot. load profile data into the VLR at the visiting location and update the HLR with the location of the VLR if necessary; and PA1 .cndot. load the profile data to the call processing systems and activate the service. PA1 1) check credit records at the service management systems of all the service providers involved in the service to make sure the user can pay for the service. PA1 2) check the customer profile in a user's Home Location Register to determine if the visiting location stored therein is different from the user's actual current visiting location; PA1 3) check the credit and network database of long distance carriers specified by the user to make sure the user can actually utilize a particular long distance carrier from the visiting location; PA1 4) load profile data into the Visiting Location Register at the visiting location and update the Home Location Register with the location of the Visiting Location Register if necessary. PA1 5) load profile data to particular call processing systems (e.g. service control points, central offices, or switches) to activate the service. For example, the switching performed at one or more central office switches may be changed so that when the user's base telephone number is called, the call is switched to another location to implement call forwarding.
This kind of personal communication service involves a plurality of service providers. There are (a) the local telephone company at the home location, (b) a long distance telephone company, (c) the local telephone company at the visiting location, and (d) the personal communication service provider (i.e. the cellular telephone company) at the visiting location. All of these are referred to herein as "service providers".
To enable this kind of personal communication service, involving multiple service providers, interoperability problems among the different service providers must be resolved. The interoperability problems can be divided into two categories: (a) location tracking and (b) service management.
The interoperability problem for location tracking has been addressed by adopting signaling protocols used by the mobile phone industry. Location tracking functions are implemented using two location registers. One of the registers, maintained by the local telephone company of the user's home location, is called the Home Location Register (HLR). The other register, maintained by the local telephone company of the visiting location, is called the Visiting Location Register (VLR). The HLR stores the customer profile data and the location of the VLR of the user. The customer profile data contains important information such as the user name/address, preferred long distance carrier, service features (e.g., call forwarding and call restriction), billing, and other administrative related information. When the user travels to a new visiting location (e.g., from New Jersey to California), a new VLR is created in the new location. A part of the profile data is loaded into the VLR such that the service provider at the visiting location can implement service features (e.g. call restriction) for the visiting user. The location of VLR in the HLR is changed to the new VLR location, and the VLR in the previously visited location is deleted. The process of creating a new VLR, loading profile data to the VLR, and updating the visiting location of a user in the HLR is called "automatic roamer registration".
The interoperability problem for service management is much more complex than that for location tracking. Service management refers to a collection of functions required to enable a personal communication service user to subscribe to, modify, and activate service features anywhere and at any time. Examples of service management functions include phone number administration, customer profile data management, service activation, and security administration. The phone number administration function is important for maintaining the uniqueness of phone numbers. The customer profile data management function provides customer profile databases and user interfaces for creating, modifying or transferring such databases. The service activation function extracts part of the data specifying service features from the profile data and loads this data into physical communication systems that process calls. The service activation function also controls the activation and deactivation of the service features. The security administration function prevents or detects unauthorized uses of services and service management functions.
Service management functions of this type need to be implemented to provide personal communication services involving multiple service providers. Such implementation of the service management functions generally requires interactions between application software and various databases owned and operated by the different service providers. Consider an application which enables a nomadic user to subscribe to a personal communication service from any service provider at any location. An example of such a service is call forwarding to a temporarily rented portable phone. The application may, for example, need to perform the following database access operations at databases maintained by various different service providers:
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the invention to provide a service management system and method to implement the above-described service management functions by accessing databases of multiple service providers, so that personal communication services involving multiple service providers can be made available to users in a rapid and reliable fashion.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a distributed service management system comprising a plurality of individual service management systems operated by a plurality of individual service providers to implement the above-identified service management functions.
It is another object of the invention to provide a distributed service management system which is formed from a plurality of individual service management systems operated by individual service providers without significantly modifying the individual service management systems.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a service management system which can be used to provide new, heretofore unavailable, personal communication services.
Specifically, it is an object of the invention to provide enhanced personal communication services on a temporary basis to nomadic users, examples of such services including (a) call forwarding from a user's base telephone to a mobile telephone; and (b) the restriction of incoming calls to a mobile telephone.